Apple’s Touch Bar doesn’t have to be so terrible

Alex Cranz, Gizmodo:

Around the Gizmodo office, my colleagues groaned when news broke that following a refresh of its laptop line, there would no longer be a standard MacBook Pro without a Touch Bar. Apple, in their eyes, was going all in on the little touch-sensitive OLED strip above the number pad, and it was a travesty.

Someone complained that the only time they used the Touch Bar was when they activated the Siri touch button by accident several times a day.

I don’t see the MacBook Touch Bar as terrible, but I do see it as unfulfilled promise. There are a few use cases where I’m glad to have it:

  • Scrubbing through a video
  • Tapping a difficult to spell word or emoji as I’m typing
  • Adjusting screen volume or brightness
  • Exiting full screen video

That’s about it. Not terrible, but there’s just so much potential here. Now that Touch Bar is on every single MacBook model, perhaps Apple will open the Touch Bar up a bit more, encourage more creative experimentation by developers by relaxing limitations on what is allowed on that bit of real estate.

In the meantime, there’s TouchSwitcher and BetterTouchTool.